Echo Burning
Echo Burning is the fifth novel in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. It was published in 2001 by Putnam in America and Bantam in the United Kingdom. Description Hitching rides is an unreliable mode of transport. In temperatures of over a hundred degrees, you’re lucky if a driver will open the door of his air-conditioned car long enough to let you slide in. That’s Jack Reacher's conclusion. He’s adrift in the fearsome heat of a Texas summer, and he needs to keep moving through the wide open vastness, like a shark in the water. The last thing he’s worried about is exactly who picks him up. He never expected it to be somebody like Carmen. She’s alone, driving a Cadillac. She’s beautiful, young and rich. She has a little girl who is being watched by unseen observers. And a husband who is in jail. Who will beat her senseless when he comes out. If he doesn’t kill her first. Reacher is no stranger to trouble. And at Carmen’s remote ranch in Echo County there is plenty of it: lies and prejudice, hatred and murder. Reacher can never resist a lady in distress. Her family is hostile. The cops can’t be trusted. The lawyers won’t help. If Reacher can’t set things straight, who can? Plot Jack Reacher breaks a bully's nose and finger after being repeatedly provoked in a Texas saloon, so when the bully turns out to be a local cop and shows up with three of his colleagues the following day to arrest him, Reacher decides it's time to move on. He chooses hitchhiking as the fastest escape and hooks up with a driver of Mexican heritage named Carmen Greer. She says that the only reason she stopped, however, is because she has a problem: Her tax-evading husband, Sloop, is being released from prison soon, and he will inevitably continue beating her as he did so many times before, especially because he knows she was the one who informed on him. Carmen has been diligently searching for candidates to kill him, and she thinks Reacher's military background may qualify him for the job. Reacher initially refuses and even leaps out of the car and back into the sweltering 110-degree (Fahrenheit) heat, but then he expeditiously changes his mind and agrees to accept a ride back to her ranch. It is there that Carmen, her husband Sloop and the rest of his family live, and Reacher is promising nothing more than to look into the situation and, if necessary, to act as her bodyguard. Carmen and Jack then proceed to pick up her daughter Ellie, who gets on well with Reacher. Meanwhile, two other groups are introduced: a group of watchers, composed of two men and a boy who have been staking out the ranch, and a trio of hitmen (two men and one woman) who subsequently kill the first group on the orders of their mutual employer after murdering Al Eugene, the lawyer who had secured Sloop's release. Carmen and Reacher arrive back at the ranch, but Jack does not receive a warm welcome from Sloop's bigoted mother, brother, or the two ranchers who work there. Reacher gets the Greers to hire him as a wrangler, and reluctantly teaches Carmen how to handle a firearm. Suspecting that Reacher is not what he appears and that he may cause trouble for the family, they order the other ranchers to dispose of him; however, Reacher subdues them and returns unharmed. Sloop then arrives, and claims Jack is trespassing; he is arrested and removed by Texas Rangers. En route, the rangers are called back: Sloop has been shot and killed, and the authorities charge Carmen with the murder after finding a gun. Furthermore, while she is incarcerated, she suddenly confesses to the murder and assiduously denies legal help from Alice Amanda Aaron, the pro bono attorney whom Reacher procures for her. Assisted by Hack Walker, the Pecos County district attorney and an old friend of Sloop's, Jack and Alice discover a cover-up related to the murder of several illegal immigrants by Hack, Sloop, and Eugene. Reacher concludes that Hack orchestrated the murders in order to protect his election chances, and that he is pressuring Carmen to confess by threatening Ellie's life. Jack kills two of the hitmen in an ambush and confronts Hack at the ranch, whereupon Sloop's mother kills him as a fire breaks out and burns down their house. After tracking down and subduing the third man at a motel, preventing him from killing Ellie, Jack leaves Carmen to start a new life as he prepares to look for a ride out of Texas. Appearances Category:Novels